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Fourteen-year-old Hannah Smith lived in Leicestershire, England. Fifteen-year-old Natalie Natividad lived in a little town called Hebbronville, Texas. Neither girl knew of the other, but they had a few things in common. For one, they were both bombarded with hurtful messages online, some saying nasty things about the way the girls looked, others going so […]

Every couple of years or so, we try to survey Plugged In’s users to see what you think of the website: what works, what doesn’t, what you’d like to see changed or added. Our team got the results of our latest survey this week. And there was one contrasting set of suggestions that I felt […]

We do indeed live in a Brave New World. And even though things haven’t yet turned out quite as bleak and dystopian as Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel may have imagined they would, his title still feels apropos in some ways. The internet has made this a time when information zips around the world in a […]

Back in the day, television was considered something of a cultural unifier—the very definition of mass entertainment that would serve as a focal point for familial, communal, and even intergenerational gatherings. Yeah, about that. The Emmy awards—from the tone of the show to the awards themselves—illustrated a certain cultural divide. “In an age of hyper-polarization, […]

Being a mom is hard work. What with child care, car pools, household chores, food prep, and the gazillion other jobs and duties they’ve got on their plate—not to mention their regular, out-of-the-house jobs that many have besides—how do they have time to relax and unwind? You know, have a little time for themselves? Or […]

More and more young people are struggling with suicidal thoughts and actually taking their own lives, according to recent research reported by USA Today. The suicide rate for children ages 10 to 14 doubled between 2007 and 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And a new Vanderbilt study that analyzed data […]

We hear a lot about the hazard of excessive screen these days. For ourselves. For our kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics refined its recommendations for children’s screen time last October. For babies below the age of 18 months, the AAP suggests no screens at all. Between that milestone and 2 years, screens can be […]

News that today’s teens are drinking and taking drugs less than ever can’t be anything but good news, right? Yes, obviously the drop in teen substance abuse, as reported by the University of Michigan’s latest Monitoring the Future study, is a very good thing. But the question remains, why? Are today’s adolescents more risk-averse? Are […]

I love books. But lately—with lately meaning, oh, the last decade or so—a truer statement might be this: I like the idea of books. I like the idea of those big, bound collections of ideas that might stimulate my thinking and change my life in profound ways. But the reality—a reality shaped and molded by […]

We sometimes publish depressing Culture Clips. Granted, the culture has been pretty glum as of late, what with stories about algorithms making us small-minded or the push for a third-gender option or the fact that one in 25 of us, statistically, has been threatened with “revenge porn.” But the world isn’t all candy-coated chicken livers. […]

The mobile gaming app Pokémon Go crossed over 100 million downloads last week, and it’s still barreling through the culture like an armor-plated buffalo (which, frankly, would be a pretty cool Pokémon critter in itself). And now, since even your Great Aunt Edna is trying to catch ’em all, scholarly experts are popping out of […]

Ah, vacations. A time to unplug, unwind and get away from our frazzled, workaday, always online world. Only apparently, we don’t. According to a survey conducted by Intel Security, most of us still check emails, post funny videos on Facebook and do, well, pretty much everything we do online when we’re at home or work. […]

NBC’s The Biggest Loser has been one of the network’s, ahem, biggest reality TV success stories. It’s paired consistently strong ratings with feel-good storylines about overweight people working hard to get back to a healthy size and all of the good things that come with it. Everybody wins, right? After all, what could be wrong […]

The title of this blog, “Film Is a Drug,” comes from a quote from a well-known person. The full statement is this: Film is a powerful medium. Film is a drug. Film is a potential hallucinogen. It goes into your eye, it goes into your brain. It stimulates. And is a dangerous thing. It can […]

Once upon a time, we used to take pictures of other people. But with the arrival of a front-facing camera on Apple’s iPhone 4 in 2010, we began taking pictures of ourselves en masse. Selfies, they were called—a fluffy, innocuous-sounding descriptor. Six years later, we’re taking more pictures of ourselves than ever. And the younger […]

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

Good media discernment is about guarding our eyes and hearts before we watch or listen. And it's also about grappling with the entertainment we do see or hear. That's why the Plugged In Blog is devoted to guarding, discussing and grappling.